Courses

10.04.18 | Animating to Music in Maya (5 Tuesday Evenings)

The history of how animation and music have been related right from the early Warner Brothers shorts and features like Disneys’ Fantasia to the current day with the massive popularity of animated musicals and music videos.

The course will explore the similarity between animation and music and how similar a lot of the terminology is between them.

We will look at how methods that were used by 2D animators to time their animation to music can be updated for the 3D animation workflow.

We will practice fundamental animation exercises with an emphasis on using sound and music as a guide for timing, intent and mood of an animation and discuss classic animation principles that relate to this like Timing and Spacing.

The course will progress to illustrate the complete workflow for animating a character dancing to music from rig set-up to planning, reference, blocking and polishing. I’ll demonstrate how I created my ‘Deadpool Can Dance’ piece (https://vimeo.com/205396482) and then participants will each create their own dance move with their character with my guidance.

By the end of the course participants will have explored animation from many angles, from the classic principles laid down by Disney right up to workflow tips and tricks for working more efficiently in Maya and will have animated a finished shot of their character dancing or otherwise reacting to sound or music.

Participant Profile:

This course is aimed at beginner to intermediate animators, suitable attendees will have a basic knowledge of animation and general proficiency with Maya. The course does not require any knowledge of music apart from assuming that most people listen to some form of it.

Tutor Info:

Brian Horgan is a busy freelance animator working for clients around the world, including Nickelodeon, iAnimate, Tiny Inventions, GhostTown Media, Unit9, HappyFinish and Cavalier Games. Brian has worked on commercials, short films, console games and VR and AR projects.
He is also a keen developer of animation tools for Maya, the best known being bh_Ghost and bh_pathAnim which has been adopted at several well-known studios around the world.
As well as animation Brian has a long history with music, having played guitar from a young age and played in bands for many years.
Brian’s current animation reel can be seen here : https://vimeo.com/244060795